Words of Delight, Words of Truth, Ecclesiastes 12:8-14 (November 13, 2016)

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1 Words of Delight, Words of Truth, Ecclesiastes 12:8-14 (November 13, 2016) 8 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity. 9 Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. 11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. PRAY We finish up Ecclesiastes today (praise God!). It has been a challenging book to study. But here we ve reached the conclusion, and in it the Preacher (the author of Ecclesiastes) says: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes 12:13. Now, if God has given us commandments, that means he has spoken to us. And that s what we ll look at today. First, our need for God to speak to us. Second, the grace of God that comes when he speaks to us. Third, the change God brings when he speaks to us. Ecclesiastes 12:8: Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity. The Preacher ends where he began. This is an almost exact restatement of Ecclesiastes 1:3. The word vanity translates the Hebrew word hebel. In other places, it s translated as mist, or vapor, or breath. But one place where this word is used is Proverbs 31:30: Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain [there it is], but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Now, in what sense is beauty vain? We talked about this in our first sermon on Ecclesiastes. Beauty is vain in the sense that it is fleeting. You can t hold on to it. The more you try to hold onto beauty, the more, as you grow older, you try to look young, the more ridiculous you look. It s ridiculous to try and look young, and it s ridiculous to try to act young. When a three year old does something, we say it s cute. When an eight year old does the same thing, we tell him to grow up; he s too old to act like that. But when a thirty-eight year old does the same thing, we call the police. Our lives, the Preacher says, are vanity, in the sense that they are fleeting. We can t hold onto them, and they are continually moving on. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving [chasing] after wind. Ecclesiastes 1: J.D. Shaw 1

2 According to the Preacher, your life under the sun, in other words your life on earth without reference to God, without reference to any transcendent meaning or purpose, is like a sandcastle you build at the beach. We also said this in week one. Everyone knows that no matter how ornate and beautiful your sandcastle is, it s not going to last. It s vain. Some sandcastles are nicer than others, some have a lot more work invested into them, but sooner rather than later they are all coming down. If there is no God, if this life is all there is, your life can only be a sandcastle. But, actually, it s worse than that. As I ve thought about it since week one in Ecclesiastes a sandcastle is a poor analogy for life under the sun. Because a sandcastle, at least, has a designer. Someone had to shape that sand into the castle. And it has a purpose; it gives pleasure to the one who made it, and anyone else walking by. Our lives, however, under the sun, have no designer, and have no purpose. So our lives aren t like a sandcastle; if there is no God then our lives are like the grains of sand on the beach. The tide comes in and out and rearranges the grains of sand, but there is no design, nor is there any purpose in how the sand lies on the beach. It s also what our modern, Western culture tells us. All there is to life is what is under the sun and that we are only the accidental collocation of atoms. We are only here because we won the evolutionary crapshoot, but there s no purpose or meaning to any of it, any more than there is meaning in the toss of the dice. And when you die (and one day you will), you ll rot. Then, one hundred years after you die no one will remember you or know anything about you or cared that you lived. And even if you re exceptionally smart, ambitious, and hard working, and you re elected President of the United States, in five hundred years no one will remember you. As proof: name the thirteenth President of the United States. Millard Fillmore. Does anyone in this room know anything about him? And he s only been dead a little more than 140 years. Finally, if life on earth is all there is, then one day a few billion years from now our sun will burn out, and all life on earth will be destroyed, and every trace that the entire human race even existed will be obliterated. That s all review. But here s the Preacher s point in chapter twelve. If life has no designer, if it has no meaning or purpose, then how can you possibly know how to live? How can you possibly think your life is important? How could there possibly be instructions, guidelines, a set of best practices or goals for life under the sun? And of course the answer must be that you can t know how to live if that s the case. The question of how should I live is absurd if there is no designer. You are doomed to just drift through life making the best of it you because there is no purpose to any of it. Years ago the movie You Can Count on Me came out. It s always been a favorite of mine. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo (who plays Bruce Banner and the Hulk in the Avenger movies) starred in it. It was nominated for a couple of Oscars. Mark Ruffalo 2016 J.D. Shaw 2

3 plays Terry, who is in his early twenties and is clearly just drifting through life. He has no plan or purpose, constantly getting in trouble, getting hurt and hurting others. But his sister gets him to sit down and talk with the minister of the church in the small town where they live. He clearly doesn t want to be there and at one point says, You know, I m insulted that I have to sit here, because I don t believe any of this stuff like you do. The minister, though, is actually a character in the movie (unlike every other portrayal of ministers these days). He actually has an opinion, he actually has something to say and isn t just someone to be mocked, and he goes after Terry. He says, You know, Terry, a lot of people come to see me with all kinds of problems: drugs, alcohol, marital problems, sexual problems Terry interrupts, Great job you have man. Well, I like it. Because even in this little town, I really feel like what I do is very connected with the real center of people s lives. I m not saying I m always Mr. Effective, but I don t feel like my life is off to the side of what s important. I don t feel that my happiness and comfort are based on closing my eyes to trouble within myself or trouble within other people. I don t feel I m a negligible little scrap floating around in some kind of empty void, with no sense of connectedness to anything around me except by virtue of whatever little philosophies I can scrape together on my own. Can I ask you, Terry, do you think your life is important? And Terry doesn t know what to say in response. And of course Terry can t say anything in response. All he really knows about life is that when he dies, he rots. And when the sun dies, everybody is going to rot, and nobody is going to be around to remember anything. Terry believes he s free but, really, free is just another word for being a negligible little scrap floating around in a kind of empty void with no sense of connectedness to anything around me. If there is no God, then we are on our own, and life can t have meaning or design or purpose. But there is a God, there is a Creator who designed us and gives our lives meaning and purpose, and this God has spoken to us. And we believe at this church that God has spoken to us fully, authoritatively, inerrantly, and sufficiently in the Holy Bible the 66 books of Scripture. Some people say, Yes, I believe in God, but I don t think he has spoken to us in any understandable way. I certainly don t believe the Bible is the way he s spoken to us. I believe God exists, but I don't think he s spoken to us. That argument never made any sense to me. Have you ever bought something that required assembly a piece of furniture, or a trampoline, or some kind of toy for your kids for Christmas and the instructions weren t included in the box? When that happens, what do you think? I ll tell you what I think I think, Those idiots! They didn t even pack the instructions! Friends, God is not an idiot. If you believe that there is an all-knowing, all-seeing God that created you, then of course he s spoken in some way so that you can know how to live! It wouldn t make any 2016 J.D. Shaw 3

4 sense that he would create you and then leave you all alone without any hint of what he wants from you or how to live in peace and happiness. And if you think: OK, but how can we know that the Bible is the way God has spoken to us? That s an excellent question for another sermon. Suffice it to say this: the Preacher wasn t worried about that question, so since we are studying his writing we won t go there. But I have addressed that question several times over the years, so if you really want to know what I think you can go to our website and find those sermons and listen to them. Second, the grace that comes when God speaks. Ecclesiastes 12:13: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Our duty, the Preacher says, and the result of hearing God speak, is that we will fear him. Now, what does it mean to fear God? It does not mean being afraid for your safety. It does not mean we are to worry that God is going to hurt us. Rather, the fear of God in the Bible means being in a position of awe and wonder before the love and power and majesty of God. When we experience this, we might cry or drop to our knees, but not because we are worried that God will strike us down. Instead, it s because we are overwhelmed by the reality of who God is. If you look up in the sky at night and see the stars of our galaxy, that can cause you to fear God. You think, Oh, my goodness. You ll feel experience awe and wonder before the majesty of it. But you re not afraid it will hurt you. You re not scared for your life. You just get overwhelmed thinking about how big it is and how small you are. Maybe the words of the Monty Python song come to mind. You know it? Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour. It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned, The sun that is the source of all our power. Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, Are moving at a million miles a day; In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars; It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side; It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide. We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, We go 'round every two hundred million years; And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe. Now, I m certain the members of Monty Python did not and do not believe in a creator behind the universe, but if you do and you look up at it at night when you can see a sky full of stars you will experience the fear of God J.D. Shaw 4

5 But the main thing about God that will cause you to fear him, that will cause you to fall on your knees in amazement at who he is, is something you d never find out by looking at nature. It only comes from hearing him speak in his Word. If you only look at nature and never listen to God speak to you in his word, you d never know about sin and you d never know about grace. You d never know about sin: oh, you d feel guilty. Everyone feels guilty for what they ve done or what they re not doing. We live in a world of guilt. But you d never know that sin is also and mainly a personal offense against the God who created you. You d never know that your sin is cosmic treason, and merits the worst imaginable punishment hell. And, likewise, if you only looked at the stars you d never know about grace. You d always feel guilty, and no matter how hard you work you won t stop feeling guilty because you can t atone for your sins. You d never know that this God who could squash you like a bug is justly angry about your sin, but rather than pour his anger out on you he became a man in Jesus Christ. Jesus lived a perfect life without any sin without hurting or offending anyone at all yet on the cross he died and took our place. God squashed him like a bug on the cross, so that we could receive grace. We could be forgiven for our sins, and be reconciled to God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14. You d never know that glory, that grace, without listening when God speaks in his Word. You d never know the grace that God has shown you in his Son. I had a young lady in my church in Starkville who, when she was twelve or thirteen, really began to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when it dawned on her that Jesus died for her sins, and she certainly didn t deserve Jesus to do anything for her, she was kind of in shock, and she started crying and she said, You mean he did that for me? What happened? The fear of God came into her life. Have you experienced the grace that leads to fear? T was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved; how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. Third, the change that comes when God speaks. Ecclesiastes 12:11: The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. Boy, I don t think I ever noticed this verse before this past week but it s now one of my favorites. The Shepherd is God. Over and over again in the Bible God is called a shepherd. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. Ezekiel 34:12. This verse tells us two things about words of the wise, the collected sayings, the Scriptures J.D. Shaw 5

6 First, God s words are like goads. What were goads? They were sharp metal rods shepherds would use to prod animals into walking. You would hold them out in front of you and poke the animal in the back part of their legs, and the pain would make them keep walking to green pastures and fresh water. The pain of the goad led to health for the flock. God s word is like a goad. He uses it like a shepherd to prick you, not in your leg, but in your conscience. It hurts you. It pushes you to do things you don t otherwise want to do, but on the other side of the pain is life. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Matthew 5: You will have many occasions in your life to hurt the people you love, to let them down, to offend them. If you don t deal with it, those hurts will wind up strangling your relationship. But if God is speaking to you, he will goad you, stick you, hound you until you finally go and say, I am sorry I really had no excuse for how I acted. Will you please forgive me? It hurts, but on the other side is life a renewed, strengthened relationship. Second, they are nails firmly fixed. So picture in your mind someone driving nails into a piece of wood big, ten-penny nails, deep into a piece of hardwood, like oak. Those nails aren t going anywhere. Even if you try to pull them out with a claw, still it will be work. Those nails (literally, pegs in Hebrew) are in there so strong that you can stand on them, climb them up to the top of that piece of wood on them. Think about the metal pegs sticking out of telephone poles. Now, when it comes to how to live our lives, when it comes to how to make decisions, when it comes to what matters most, don t we all want some nails firmly fixed to hold onto? It seems that a lot of us make decisions in our lives based on a combination of the following: stuff our mom or dad said when we were kids, things our favorite movie or fictional character did or said, our political views, our emotions, and a smattering of Scripture here and there, and much of that taken out of context. There s no coherence to the wisdom we use to navigate life. Now, your dad may have said some fine things, and your favorite fictional character may have been written to be someone with real wisdom, and that Scripture verse in calligraphy on your kitchen wall ripped out of its biblical context may look really cute, but that s no way to go about making decisions in your life. At the very least, there will be gaps in your wisdom, and at worst the sources of your wisdom will conflict and disagree, and then where will you be? But if God has spoken to you, and you have listened then you can hold on to it you can make the right decisions even when strong pressures are encouraging you to decide differently J.D. Shaw 6

7 For example, if your child is really upset because she has a lot of different assignments due at school the next day, and she didn t have the time she needed to do them well, and so she s in tears, and you know your child isn t crying because she s been lazy and now it s time to pay the piper, but because she s a perfectionist and tends to take on too much work when that happens, how can you respond as a parent? You can say, Honey, it s okay. Just go to bed and get some rest. If you ve worked hard on your schoolwork and you get an F, we don t care. We just want you to do your best; we just want you to do whatever you do to the glory of God. Now, how could the parent say that? How could the parent honestly say, I don t care if you get an F or not so long as you do your best and do it for the glory of God? How could the parent say that with all the pressures on you and your children to make good grades and get into a good school and be successful? The answer is: only if you are standing on God s word, like nails firmly fixed. Because then you ll know that grades aren t the most important thing, and a bad grade in the life of a perfectionist will be made up and might actually help them in a lot of ways down the road, teach them they aren t in control and that they need God s grace, and in turn learn to show grace to others (because perfectionists are the last people to ever be compassionate and gracious to others or themselves). See, when you are standing on God s Word, you re getting wisdom that cannot move you. You ll be able to tell the truth and be a person of integrity, even though in the short run you ll lose business. You ll be able to be a truly generous person and give your money away in big proportions, even though the world is pressuring you to buy more for yourself. You ll be able to use sex only inside of marriage between a man and a woman to nurture and bless and show your absolute commitment to the other person, though the world will say you are either a religious nut for doing that. You ll be able to forgive those who wrong you, and not hold their faults against them, even though it will hurt like crazy when you do that. Finally, when you re going through suffering, you can trust him. We ve had some suffering this week in our church. But when God s Word is firmly fixed in your heart, you can stand through any suffering. We are going to take the Lord s Supper now, and only God s Word can tell you what this bread and this cup means. It means that in Jesus Christ a sacrifice has been made on your behalf Jesus Christ s body was deliberately broken and his blood deliberately shed for you. And if it was done for you that means there was a point to it. A purpose behind it. Jesus suffering was great, but it wasn t pointless. He was beaten, he was bruised, he suffering the indignity of being treated like a criminal by those who were themselves perverting the law, and finally he took the unimaginable wrath of God on our behalf, to pay the debt we owe for our sins. Here s the thing: if Jesus suffering was not pointless, if it had a purpose, then we can 2016 J.D. Shaw 7

8 know that our suffering has a purpose. We are all called here according to His purpose. God is sovereign, which means that when His purposes are laid on top of your life, there is no remainder. Doug Wilson. Nothing is left over in our lives, nothing accidently shows up in our lives. Our lives are a perfect equation in God point of view, and the suffering is there for a reason. No one can tell you why you suffer, but you can know there is a reason why, and there is a God behind that reason who loved you so much so as to send his Son to take the lion s share of the world s suffering on himself. PRAY If you believe this good news about what Jesus has done for you, we invite you to take the Lord s Supper with us now. To help us understand what we re doing in the Lord s Supper, I want us to read a question and answer from the Heidelberg Catechism, which is an old, 16 th century, Christian document How does the Lord s Supper remind you and assure you that you share in Christ s one sacrifice on the cross and in all his gifts? In this way: Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat this broken bread and to drink this cup. With this command he gave this promise: first, as surely as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me and the cup given to me, so surely his body was offered and broken for me and his blood poured out for me on the cross. Second, as surely as I receive from the hand of the one who serves, and taste with my mouth the bread and cup of the Lord, given me as sure signs of Christ s body and blood, so surely he nourishes and refreshes my soul for eternal life with his crucified body and poured-out blood. If you re here today and you are unable to take the Lord s Supper because you have not yet decided to follow Jesus. We have some prayers on the second inside page of the bulletin you might read and decide to make your own. But for all who have trusted in Jesus Christ, come, and welcome, to the Lord s supper. And remember that in Jesus Christ there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less. Please place your cups in trash cans in the lobby when finished (not in buckets). Ushers, if you d come down, they will pass out bread, then come back and pass out the cups, then we ll take the Lord s Supper together J.D. Shaw 8